Geographical extension

Last update: Dec. 2017

Purpose of the service

The satellite-derived solar radiation database HelioClim-3 was so far limited to the coverage of the Meteosat Second Generation satellite, i.e. -66° to 66° both in latitude and longitude. The objective is to develop an operational service to process the real time Meteosat Second Generation images now available on the Indian ocean for the IODC service.

For that purpose, Transvalor has invested on a PhD thesis. Benoit Tournadre joined MINES ParisTech two months ago and is buried under a large volume of publications to build his bibliography.

In the meantime, we aim at developing a precursor of service which could be available to users in the meantime of the developments within the framework of this thesis.

Characteristics

Inputs:

the Meteosat images

McClear clear sky values for the MODIS albedo

Methodology for the precursor of service:

Rho_sat identical to the one of Heliosat-2

Rho_cloud identical to the one of Heliosat-2

All the work is focused on Rho_clear, which exploits McClear to avoid the weakness of Heliosat-2 (Rho_g et Kc_max)

Advantages:

Direct usage of McClear (instead of indirect like in HelioClim-3 version 5)

No problem of sea shore temporal unconsistency

Glitter correction included

Direct correction of altitude

Steps of developments

(reverse chronological order)

Oct. 2017: precursor of service available but not yet validated. We run out of time to carry out this validation...